Overview
In this post, I show you a short and effective shoulder warm up to reduce the likelihood of injury for the shoulder joint and girdle (or shoulder blade), that you should do especially prior to any sports that require overhead repetitive actions (e.g. tennis, swimming). Before you commence and after you finish any physical activity, you should always warm up and cool down so as to reduce the likelihood of injury.
Why bother to warm up?
The effect of this shoulder warm up has on the body is that it promotes blood flow to the affected area. With blood flow comes added nutrition to an area and also the transportation away of waste products from the area, which leave your muscles, tendons, joints and ligaments more elastic and therefore primed and ready for the movement to follow. You are therefore far less likely to incur injury having warmed up, than were you to just jump straight into your chosen activity.
After this exercise, you can move onto the shoulder and chest stretch exercise here. Later on you can focus your attention on strengthening the posterior neck and shoulder muscles such as in this video. But first take a look below at the shoulder warm up video for pre- and post- activity.
Disclaimer
As always, please consult your medical practitioner for advice before undertaking any of these exercises as none of these videos from Kirwan Clinic do not constitute medical advice.
Instructions
First Exercise
- Place your hands on collar bones
- Open chest & perform shoulder blade circles 5 times
- Repeat 5 more times in opposite direction
Second Exercise
- Place left hand on right collar bones
- Slowly perform 5 shoulder joint circles
- Repeat 5 more times in opposite direction
